The EconomistDigital highlights, March 22nd 2014

A case of the vapersWherever big tobacco marches, its lawyers are never far behind. So it is proving with e-cigarettes, as a patent war has broken out between a subsidiary of Britain’s Imperial Tobacco and some of America’s biggest manufacturers of vapour smokes

Should she stay or should she go?Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court’s fiercest liberal, recently turned 81. She may be molasses-like on her feet, but she shows no signs of intellectual decline. Yet even some of her strongest supporters say her 21st year on the bench should be her last

Of pulp fiction and James BondOlga Sobolev, an academic at the London School of Economics, discusses the ways writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain responded to the cold war. Neither side produced many great works, but mostly propaganda, pulp fiction and spy novels

From our blogs

Sacrilege: Wrong on so many levelsBlasphemy laws give representatives of the state an arbitrary power that can easily be used for nefarious purposes. Pakistan is by far the worst offender

Transport: Fragmented flag-carriersWhen the seven former Yugoslav states went their own ways, each set up its own national airline. But does the Balkans really need so many flag-carriers?

El Salvador: A close resultFinal results in El Salvador’s general election were released on March 13th, with Salvador Sánchez Ceren winning by the narrowest of margins

“You can have equality or meritocracy, but you cannot have both. The maze of licensing, regulation and bureaucracy are the primary impediments to those creating wealth, not others’ inherited fortune. [Remove them] if you want the economy to grow, and thus the power of inherited money to shrink.”—On “Inherited wealth”, March 18th 2014

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